Apostles of Fanaticism and Superstition
This religion claiming with so much imperious austerity, celestial origin, has not been less injurious to the cause of morality, than to that of science. Its fundamental principles are of a nature destructive to all moral virtue, its doctrines openly disavow all benefit resulting from the practice of a genuine morality. Faith, atonement, and supernatural grace are the essential requisites of eternal happiness, and these have nothing to do with the mental or moral energies of our nature. The cultivation of our minds, the improvement of our faculties, and the performance of moral duties, by which alone man can expect or deserve to enjoy permanent felicity, are not considered as the proper means of acquiring it; but a blind an unintelligible faith, a mysterious and inexplicable belief in carnage and murder, are to become the objects of our highest admiration! "Not of works," says Paul, (the apostle of fanaticism and superstition) "lest any man should boast." And again,